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“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a royal figure,” remarks Alesandra Seutin. Called the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also associated in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like prominent artists. Starting as a teenager sent to work to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually served as an envoy for the nation, then the country’s representative to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable story and impact inspire the choreographer’s latest work, Mimi’s Shebeen, set for its British debut.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines dance, live music, and spoken word in a stage work that isn’t a simple biography but utilizes her past, particularly her experience of banishment: after relocating to the city in the year, she was barred from South Africa for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Subsequently, she was banned from the United States after marrying activist her spouse. The performance resembles a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with the fabulous South African singer Tutu Puoane at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for home-brewed liquor and animated discussions, usually managed by a host. Her parent the matriarch was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Unable to pay the penalty, Christina was incarcerated for six months, bringing her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the details Seutin discovered when researching her story. “So many stories!” says she, when we meet in the city after a show. Seutin’s parent is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before relocating to learn and labor in the UK, where she established her dance group the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform her music, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a youngster, and dance to them in the living room.

Songs of freedom … the artist sings at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in hospital in the city. “I paused my career for three months to look after her and she was constantly requesting Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were singing together,” Seutin remembers. “I had so much time to kill at the facility so I began investigating.” As well as learning of Makeba’s triumphant return to South Africa in the year, after the release of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin discovered that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that her child the girl died in childbirth in 1985, and that because of her exile she could not attend her parent’s funeral. “Observing individuals and you focus on their success and you forget that they are facing challenges like everyone,” states Seutin.

Creation and Concepts

All these thoughts contributed to the making of the show (premiered in the city in 2023). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was successful, but the idea for the work was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, Seutin pulls out threads of her life story like memories, and references more broadly to the idea of uprooting and loss nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a second protagonist, a contemporary version who is a migrant. “And we gather as these alter egos of personas connected to the icon to welcome this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in synthesis with the musicians on the platform. Her choreography incorporates multiple styles of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including street styles like the form.

Honoring strength … the creator.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the group were unaware about the singer. (She died in the year after having a heart attack on stage in Italy.) Why should new audiences learn about Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate young people to advocate what they are, expressing honesty,” says Seutin. “But she accomplished this very gracefully. She’d say something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin aimed to take the same approach in this work. “We see dancing and hear beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and moments that resonate. This is what I admire about her. Since if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a way that you would accept it, and understand it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is showing in London, 22-24 October